Dancing In The Light

by Shirley Maclaine

  We’d talk, as we walked, about pictures and music and the history of a certain composer or artist that his mother knew. Vassy seemed to be deeply involved with the individual’s relationship to nature. In his view a person’s recognition of the laws of nature were in direct ratio to their understanding of life. He obviously had a sophisticated appreciation for food combining and herbal medicines, but he also respected the spiritual knowledge of the seven chakkra energy centers along the spinal column in relation to cosmic harmony. And soon after we were together, I brought my yoga instructor out to Malibu to give us a lesson.

  Vassy took to it immediately except for one thing. Hatha yoga is, of course, physically painful at first, but it is to be approached with gentle discipline, never with force. Vassy would stand in front of the mirror as though he were revving himself up for the Chinese torture chamber, setting his face in an expression of such determined misery that I’d burst out laughing and lose my balance in a posture. He didn’t find my laughter amusing. He’d say I had no sensitivity to his need for pain, making me laugh even more. Vassy would lie on the floor in front of the mirror and lift himself in the cobra position until he nearly broke his back. Then, of course, I would have to stop laughing long enough to try and help him extricate himself from permanent curvature of the spine. He was then even more determined to prove that he was correct, that force was the best approach. Was this Russian, or simply Vassy? I was afraid to speculate on the implications for the world if the need to suffer was true of an entire nation.

  The sessions with my yoga instructor were less maniacal because my teacher, Bikram, wouldn’t allow such determined self-torture.

  “It is unnecessary, Vassy,” he would say. “Yoga can be painful but only because you are gently realigning the body in relation to its energy. And your body will react to the expression on your face. Relax your expression. It will determine how you approach your body.”

  Vassy would listen because Bikram was an expert, but I saw him looking for a way to avoid curing his misery and soon he found one. Through conversations after yoga class, he discovered that Bikram was a lover of Rolls-Royces. It wasn’t long before Vassy was concentrating on cars instead of relaxing into health. I continued with the yoga and Vassy got into cars.

  During this time, my rehearsals progressed nicely on my television special and Vassy would pick me up after meetings at the offices of the producers who were producing the special with me. I began to understand the invisible power of a commanding personality—even when people had no idea whether that personality was anybody or not.

  I didn’t say much to my friends about my new Russian friend, but I suppose the word got around anyway. Perhaps it was the fact that he was a real Russian which precipitated some of the reactions, but whenever Vassy walked into a room, the conversation would come to a grinding halt because everyone there sensed they were now in the presence of a “somebody.” It was hard to define how that worked exactly. They didn’t stop the flow of concentration and conversation because they didn’t want him to hear. It was more that his energy was so commanding that he simply could not be ignored. His need to command attention was so strong that he achieved his purpose with very little effort. The spiritualists would attribute it to his aura. An inaudible language emanated from his aura which said “Notice me.” His physical appearance was certainly striking enough to cause such reactions regardless, but then after my co-workers became acquainted with how he looked, his arresting quality still continued to function—at least on social occasions.

  Vassy’s intrinsic need to be the center of attention was important to his work as a director, not only because the director is the helmsman on any movie set but also because he personally adored individualism and insisted that in the creative process it be respected. So intense was his respect for individual “presence” that sometimes it seemed outrageously “Russian” to me.

  One evening, as I was rehearsing the dance numbers for my special in a big gymnasium in downtown Hollywood, Vassy dropped by to watch me work. I knew he was coming and had invited him, although he knew he was free to watch anytime he wanted to.

  When we dancers were rung out and ready to call it quits, I walked over to him, greeted him, and asked him how he liked what he saw. He nodded fine, but didn’t go into any detail. I let the low-key response go by; I was tired and wanted to get to food.

  At dinner, however, he was morose.

  “You not pay enough attention when I visit you at rehearsal,” he said.

  “I what?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

  “When I enter room, you continue to work. You don’t acknowledge me at all.”

  Oh brother, I thought. There is trouble here. In America nothing interfered with the concentration of people at work. But perhaps in Russia one was supposed to make a big deal out of a fellow artist walking into a room.

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he answered. “I am not insignificant. You continue your work. You don’t care whether I am there.”

  “No, Honeybear,” I said, “I do care that you are there. I love that you are there. I love that you are interested in what I’m doing. I’d love it if you would give me constructive criticism, too, as long as you don’t suggest that you rechoreograph. But I’m a professional dancer and in America we don’t interrupt all the other dancers in order to greet a friend.”

  He didn’t smile. He didn’t acknowledge my point of view. We were silent through most of the rest of dinner because I think we both realized there would be an explosive argument otherwise.

  Then, a few weeks later, I began the four-day marathon of taping my special. Taping a special is not recommended to people with limited stamina. It is cruel and punishing because taping costs are astronomical. Time is money. It’s as simple as that.

  I had a monologue-in-song to do which ran about nine minutes. Television directors don’t work as intricately with performers as film directors do. There is no time. Vassy had seen me rehearsing my monologue-in-song alone at home and asked to read the script of it. I gave it to him.

  “This is soap opera,” he said with finesse.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s television. I think it will work.”

  “Maybe,” he answered, “however, I have some ideas.”

  Well, I thought to myself, this would be a good trial run to experience in a small way what it would be like to work with him.

  “Sure,” I said excitedly. “Let’s do. I’d love it.”

  We sat down together while he broke down the emotional requirements of the acting. Then we began to work.

  With each line of either prose or lyric, he had an idea of how it should be done. He would stop me and explain what was in his mind. I listened and to my delight it was imaginative and charming. He suggested pieces of business and emphasis on emotional attitude. Nearly every suggestion was magical, although all were reminiscent of what I had seen his actresses do in his films—the same playful, childlike quality. But it worked for what I was doing. We worked together for an hour or so and I enjoyed every minute of it, particularly pleased that he seemed so able to identify with what the woman I was singing about was going through.

  “I am partially female, you know,” he said interestingly. “I identify with the female sensibility often. It is from several lifetimes I spent as a woman long ago.”

  I didn’t think that was ridiculous. I had considered the possibility of myself having been a man long ago, since so many people who dealt with me today found me ballsy as well as feminine. I had made a kind of study of male and female energy. The female energy was the yin energy, residing in the right hemisphere of the brain. It controlled mystical, receptive, intuitive, artistic characteristics. The left hemisphere of the brain (the yang side) controlled assertive, logical, active, and linear characteristics.

  Both Vassy and I seemed to exemplify the characteristics of each. Each of us had male and female qualities in our personalities. The combustion between us occurred when
each of us expressed ourselves identically at the same time.

  “I know how women feel,” Vassy went on. “That is why I am good woman’s director.”

  I wanted to ask him why he couldn’t seem to extend the same sensitivity to women in real life but instead I thanked him for his help and said I thought the director of the special would appreciate what I would bring to the scene the next day, and of course Vassy and I would both consider the help he had given me a private matter so as not to tread on the director’s territory. Vassy nodded but said nothing.

  The next day the stage and lighting was set for the scene. Vassy was there to observe my exhibition of what he had suggested to me the night before. The TV director was working from the “booth,” as we call it, and directed me by voice.

  We went for a take. I could see Vassy in the shadows at the back of the set. I appreciated his control in not feeling that the sound stage was his, particularly with his new-found personal involvement in the show. However, his control didn’t last long.

  The minute I finished the take, Vassy walked from the shadows directly into the lit set, where he proceeded to loudly praise my work and also to explain to me what I had done wrong.

  I headed for the ladies’ room, motioning Vassy to follow me. In private I thanked him, but said I preferred not to have his direction obvious to all the technicians and most particularly not to the real director.

  “Of course,” he said, understanding completely because he would not have liked it if another director had done the same thing to him. Vassy could always understand something if he could identify with it.

  The third day of taping fell on my birthday. Some of my close friends knew it, but I didn’t like to broadcast it. First of all, any celebration would interfere with our tight schedule, and second of all, frankly I was shy and didn’t like the attention.

  Bella Abzug and her husband, Martin, were in town and staying with Vassy and me. They found Vassy colorfully and amusingly Russian, intrigued because of their own Russian ancestry. But as time went on they also found themselves learning how profound our differences actually were. They came to the taping and arranged for a cake and champagne to be wheeled out during a break. I finished the song I was taping. The assistant director beckoned for the “surprise” cake and champagne and the crew sang “Happy Birthday.” We stopped taping for a brief period to enjoy ourselves, but I noticed Vassy was nowhere to be seen. I asked for him and Bella said she had seen him in my dressing room, where she had informed him to hurry up to the set for the surprise party. There wasn’t much time for conjecture, so we finished our partying and went back to work. Still no Vassy. An hour or so later, we finished the third day’s taping and I stumbled into my dressing room exhausted. As I walked in, there was Vassy seated on the Sears Roebuck couch, staring at nothing across the room.

  “There you are,” I said, so happy to see that he hadn’t gotten lost in the labyrinth of CBS hallways. “Where were you when they brought out my cake? We missed you, Honeybear.”

  His face was frowning and hard-set.

  “Where were you?” he asked harshly, yet with a touch of petulance born out of something I didn’t understand.

  “Where was I? What do you mean? I was taping on the set, but we stopped for a few minutes for cake and champagne.”

  “You should have come for me,” said Vassy with a face like granite. Except for the look on his face I really thought he was kidding. Putting me on.

  “Are you serious?” I laughed. “It was great cake and I was embarrassed when they made a fuss over me, but if nobody had done anything it would have been worse.”

  “You should have come for me,” Vassy repeated.

  Jesus, I thought, he’s really not kidding. But what did he mean?

  Still in my costume, with the makeup man and hairdresser in tow (as they usually are with performers who can’t afford to mess themselves up because it takes too long to repair), I rounded the coffee table, my sequins scraping the wood, and put my arm around Vassy, who clearly felt left out.

  “What’s wrong, my honeybear?” I asked. “I wish you had come to my makeshift party. I wondered where you were, but I couldn’t leave all those people to come and get you. You knew it was happening, didn’t you? Bella told you, didn’t she?”

  His expression became even grimmer. “Of course,” he answered, leaving me somewhat perplexed as to what was going on.

  “Well, why didn’t you come to the set, then, and be a part of it all?” I asked.

  Vassy turned to me, not at all concerned that my professional retinue was watching. “I was waiting for you to invite me,” he said.

  “Invite you?” I said. “You don’t need to be invited, Honeybear. You know that.”

  “That is not correct,” he went on.

  “What is not correct?” I asked, feeling angry now and at the same time stupid, thinking that I must be missing something. Maybe his choice of English words was really the problem. The makeup man and hairdresser discreetly excused themselves into the hallway for a while.

  “Please, Vassy, explain to me what is bothering you.”

  “You should understand.”

  “Well, I don’t.” My voice was distinctly impatient. “I was working against the clock and when we had the surprise party we couldn’t take much time to do that either. I’m sure you understand all that.”

  “I understand,” he continued with steamroller persistence, “that I was waiting in this room to be invited to your party, and you did not invite me. You were insensitive and not concerned with my feelings—not at all.”

  I was floored. He was dead serious. He continued.

  “You must have someone come to me, at least. But you should come to me.”

  I controlled, with an effort, the anger welling up in me. What did he think shooting a TV special was—a ceremonial picnic?

  “Just a moment,” I said. “Let me get out of these sequins and let my people take me apart so they can go home, okay?”

  Vassy sat in the middle of the couch with his feet planted firmly in front of him, not moving. He didn’t acknowledge that he was upsetting everyone people who already felt uncomfortable around because they sensed in some primitive way that they did not do things the way he expected things to be done. I called my people in from the hallway. With their customary, but touching, professional discretion, they took the hair ornaments out of my wig and wiped the painted makeup from my face. They spoke swiftly and professionally about the requirements for the following day’s shooting and left.

  By that time Bella and Martin had come to the dressing room to prepare for all of us to leave. As soon as they walked in, they could feel that trouble was brewing. I had had enough time to work up an anger born out of confused frustration and couldn’t control myself.

  Vassy had not relented one iota and in fact had entrenched himself into his attitude even further. I could tell by his feet and his rigid posture. Flashes of the rehearsal hall and the “respected Russian artist” attitude crossed my mind. I wondered how I could have prevented what was happening, but I was growing more angry by the moment. It was one thing to accuse me of not exhibiting proper respect, but it was another to demand it in a “time is money” circumstance. Where the hell was his professionalism, or even common consideration for that matter? Whose birthday was it, anyway?

  Bella, wanting to be friendly and communicative, said, “Vassy, why didn’t you come and enjoy the champagne and birthday cake? We told you it was being wheeled in.”

  He blazed a look across the room at her that could have started a Russian village fire. “I was not invited,” he stated.

  “Invited?” she asked. “You know you were invited. We all knew about it.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Sheerlee must collect me herself. I sat alone and uninvited in this dressing room—as an outsider.” Bella’s eyebrows went up. Vassy continued, “Sheerlee is insensitive and cruel.”

  That did it. Maybe it was because the thought had crossed m
y mind that I should see where he was when I was cutting the cake and had promptly decided I couldn’t leave because the dressing room was too far away. It had seemed the sensible decision at the time because I honestly thought he had gotten waylaid. For him to accuse me of being insensitive when I was exhausted and frankly confused by his demands was more than I could take.

  I took a breath to blast him but Vassy had more to say. “She was not concerned at all with my feelings,” he said to Bella, who looked uncharacteristically helpless, “she behaved as big star.”

  I sprang to my feet and leaned down toward the coffee table. Cupping my arms under the table, I felt myself lift it and turn the whole thing over in the middle of the room.

  Bella and Martin eased out the door.

  Vassy’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t register shock, dismay, surprise … nothing. He maintained his emotional posture, which was just as surprising to me as what I had just done.

  “You are an elitist shit,” I shouted.

  “And you are violent,” he stated calmly as if he had had nothing to do with it.

  “You’re so goddamned provocative. I feel like turning over this whole building.”

  “You see?” he said. “You have no respect.”

  I turned my back on him, leaned my hands heavily on the dressing table, and rested a moment, head down. What energy I had left from shooting I knew I should conserve. I did not want an escalated shouting match because I knew I had only six hours to sleep anyway before reporting for the final day’s taping in the morning.